Reader in Sustainability and Computer Systems, University of Bristol. Principal Investigator, SYMPACT project

Transcript

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Antony Funnell: Today on Future Tense, freelance producer Colin Bisset takes us out onto the high seas to look at the growing popularity of cruise ships and just where that whole phenomenon might be heading.

Hello, Antony Funnell here, welcome to the program.

Around about this time last year I found myself in Vanuatu, in the South Pacific. I was only there for a week, but during that time the capital, Port Villa, was visited by four gigantic cruise liners, each one, it seemed, bigger than the next.

If you'd told me five years ago that cruising was about to become a global boom industry and that we'd be covering it on Future Tense, well, I'm not sure I'd have believed you. But as you're just about to hear from Colin, the numbers around the cruising industry are quite amazing, and while good weather is predicted, there are also some choppy seas ahead.

Here's Colin Bisset:

Colin Bisset: In 1970 around half a million people worldwide took a cruise. In 2015, that figure had risen to over 22 million. In the next few years the figure will top 25 million and looks set to continue its ascent. Gone is the image of cruising being for the elderly, with cruises now aimed at all sections of the market, young and old, tempted by the idea of luxury, fun and freedom. There are over 300 cruise ships in service today and more are being launched over the next few years, so it's difficult not to be awed by the scale of the industry, not to say the ships themselves, especially those seeking to use new technologies and new design ideas.

The Japanese organisation Peace Boat visits over 100 ports annually around the world and aims to provide a neutral space in which issues of peace and sustainability can be discussed. It plans to launch its Ecoship in 2020.

Ecoship video: Sustainable development is the key to human security and peaceful international relations, that's what we believe, and that's why we are embarking on the Ecoship project. This is the most ambitious thing that Peace Boat has ever done. With the Ecoship…

Colin Bisset: It looks like no other cruise ship, and yet its design might well have a huge influence on the future appearance of other ships. Here's Maria de la Fuente, co-director of Peace Boat.

Maria de la Fuente: We conceived the design of our Ecoship together with many, many experts, and actually we brought the expertise also from land architecture. And also one very important contribution was biomimicry and biophilia. So together we tried to design a ship that was as close as we can be to nature. But still, within that framework we realised there was a fantastic margin of action to integrate already existing technologies and also technologies that are going to be developed in the next years.

For example, we have the design of the hull. Already the first idea where we thought about our ship was to think about the animal at sea which was the most efficient when navigating, when moving in the sea. And he was really inspired by the whale. And so our hull is supposed to adapt the shape of the whale, and that will make the Ecoship extremely hydrodynamic, and that we think will help us save quite a lot of energy.

I mean, the ship will be having huge tanks for liquid natural gas, which I think at the moment is the best option because you know that burning the natural gas doesn't produce sulphur, but the ship will also be adaptive for other fuels. We will be able to burn other styles of fuels if it's grown from nonedible crops. But also in the future when other fuels such as hydrogen become more ecologically friendly, like producing hydrogen through, for example, renewables, that will be also an option that can be easily adapted. We could really easily retrofit our propulsion systems to the new sources of energy.

As for wind, we are going to be using wind for propulsion use, that's why we will be having these ten sails which are retractable, so it means that we can use them only when we have the best conditions. And when the best conditions are not there we can put them down without creating a lot of drag. So by our calculations we think that the sails will help us save 10% in the best conditions, 10% of the propulsion.

And the other way of the wind will be through the use of wind generators. The sails are going to be only for the propulsion, and the production of energy itself will be done through wind generators. Our main idea is to use those when we're alongside, because one cruise ship alongside in a port needs to have the engines on, and some calculations say that one day in a port of a cruise ship is the equivalent of 20,000 cars running. So the impact in the port of a cruise ship is very, very big.

Ecoship video: Imagine the Ecoship sailing into a port, demonstrating the clean power we can draw from the wind and the sun, everything from the ship's sails to the shape of its hull to the glass used in its windows will offer opportunities for questioning, for curiosity, for exchange, and for engagement with people on board and in local communities. Imagine a mobile…

Maria de la Fuente: I think the most impacting thing will be all the green areas. I think Ecoship will have in percentage the biggest green areas in any other cruise ship. If you are on a cruise ship for a very, very long time, people tend to get very nostalgic of green. And I think the presence of the green is going to be the most impacting thing. We hope that the Ecoship can be some kind of inspiration in terms of building ships which are already energy efficient and less polluting.

Colin Bisset: Maria de la Fuente from the Peace Boat organisation.

Aiming for the best in design is of course the goal for most cruise ship designers. When a cruise ship can cost a billion dollars to construct, then that money has to be recouped. Here's naval architect Stephen Payne, who was responsible for the design of the Queen Mary 2.

Stephen Payne: The overriding thing is that all these ships are there to make money, it's a business, and it's a competitive world out there. And the cheaper you can build a ship per birth and the cheaper you can offer those cruises to the passengers in relation to your competition, the more successful you will be.

Colin Bisset: That explains why ships are getting bigger, ships like Harmony of the Seas, the largest cruise ship ever built, capable of carrying over 6,500 passengers, and which was launched earlier this year.

Harmony of the Seas video: Okay, hold onto your hats, I've got about a minute to show you some of the top features on the world's biggest cruise ship. Deck 17, it's one of the fun decks, there's pools, there's jacuzzis, there's water slides, you can even go surfing on this ship. In total, 23 pools!

Colin Bisset: But how much bigger will they get? Stephen Payne thinks that the growth in cruise ship size has its limits.

Stephen Payne: When you look at how the ships have evolved since the Queen Mary 2, specifically the oasis class, they can efficiently use space because of the great width or the beam, as we call it, where it enables them to basically have two superstructure blocks running along the length of the hull with a big void or an atrium between them, and that's quite an efficient use of space.

Now, to go significantly larger you can either go longer, which then presents difficulties at various ports of call. To go higher presents further difficulties because a lot of these ships go to places where there are bridges or electrical cables that they have to get under. So the only sort of dimension that you've got a lot of latitude with is the beam or the width of the ship. And to make an efficient arrangement where you are using that extra beam is fairly problematic because you would have to introduce, say, a third superstructure along the length, and that really would mean increasing the beam very, very dramatically. And then the hydrodynamic form, due to the length to beam ratio, then becomes not optimal for pushing the ship through the water. So I would imagine that passenger ships won't get very much bigger.

Colin Bisset: So are we going to see the changes in perhaps not the look of them but in the way they are propelled?

Stephen Payne: That is changing. It's very interesting that when we were designing Queen Mary 2, we started work with STX France in 2000, so that's 16 years ago. In that intervening period, the same yard tell me that if we were to build a repeat ship they could probably reduce the power requirement by about 40%. It's just that the hydrodynamic knowledge has increased.

It changes of course with podded drives where we have these electric motors hanging in a casing outside of the ship to drive the ship rather than a propeller shaft. We gain about 7% to 9% increased efficiency in doing that because having a propeller shaft and a supporting bracket disturbs the water, and that disturbance decreases the efficiency. So by taking the motor from inside the ship and putting it outside in this metal canister we have that big improvement. And you've got these movable pods which…you've got a lot of power that you can use to manoeuvre a ship much better than you can with thrusters.

And then on the main engines themselves we now have systems where we can use oil or we can use natural gas. But other technologies as well are improving, like battery technologies. Certainly a number of places within Europe there are ships that use clean energy from wind generation and the like to store power in special batteries. So technology is evolving and never stops.

Colin Bisset: Cruise ships might not be getting any bigger then, but the industry certainly is. Three cruise line companies hold 80% of the market at the moment but that might change with the emergence of new destinations and new markets. Let's hear from an industry insider.

Colin Bisset: Brett sees the strength of cruising as being its ability to adapt to the diverse needs of new and existing passengers.

Brett Jardine: You know, competitively the brands that operate around the world pitch towards their own particular market, but what we are seeing, particularly with bigger ships as they are being built, is the capacity to be able to include newer different activities on board the ship itself. Unlike years gone by where cruising has been predominantly about elderly people, deck quoits and bingo, well, that is definitely not the case today. And when you look at the activities that are being incorporated into ship designs, the audience that has the biggest potential to continue to stimulate the growth of the industry is most certainly the family market. There's a lot of coastline that is still untapped, as far as the ability to cruise into is concerned.

Colin Bisset: And where do you think those untapped destinations are?

Brett Jardine: Well, I think what we are seeing particularly now is Asia is really starting to open up. So we are seeing the cruise lines deploy a lot of capacity into Asia, and there's two sides to that. One, it is tapping into new source markets. But two, it's also giving international visitors an opportunity to discover potentially fairly underdeveloped destinations that are quite exciting and involving. The numbers that we are watching very closely is of course the number of Chinese that are cruising, and I would expect that will probably exceed the number of Australians cruising this year, and it could grow that quickly that we could see the Chinese source market exceed North America as a number one source market easily by 2020, and that would be probably around 12 million Chinese cruisers, which would be really interesting.

Colin Bisset: As ships get bigger, people are getting more concerned for the pollution that they potentially can cause. You hear some horror stories of how much they emit. Do you think that is going to be tightened up, that there will be stricter measures on things like that as there are more and larger ships around the globe?

Brett Jardine: Yes, absolutely, the cruise industry is obviously very, very conscious of the footprint that is left from an environmental standpoint. And let's face it, the very oceans that we are taking people to see are what we need to be also playing our part in protecting. So yes, the environmental footprint that we leave is critical.

When we look at where ships are heading in the future in terms of technology that is becoming available to reduce emissions, the cruise industry is absolutely world leaders. There are a number of things available to help to reduce emissions from shore-side power to low sulphur fuels. But probably the most exciting and most likely thing that we will see as ships are being built today and also older ships are being retrofitted, is the use of what we would call scrubber technology. So a scrubber is something that is basically, in layman's terms, built within the exhaust, the funnel of the ship, and quite simply works like…if you could imagine, say, a car wash spraying jets of water against your car to clean it. So as the diesel particles are emitted through the funnel of the ship, very strong water jets break down those particles to effectively leave a zero emission with the scrubber installed into the ship.

While the cruise industry likes to promote its green credentials, this doesn't always accord with the way environmentalists see it, or indeed residents who live close to cruise ship ports. It's been estimated that large ships like the Harmony of the Seas can burn around 150 tonnes of fuel each day and even the best technology can't filter out all the damaging emissions from the dirtiest fuel. One of the most vocal campaigners seeking to change the impact cruise ships have on the environment is Friends of the Earth.

Marcie Keever: I am Marcie Keever, I direct the Oceans and Vessels Program at Friends of the Earth US.

Colin Bisset: Cruise ships form only a really small proportion of general shipping across the world, so surely the impact of them on the environment is also quite small.

Marcie Keever: It depends on the pollution stream, and in our opinion the cruise industry is unfortunately some of the worst violators when it comes to things like sewage and wastewater disposal because they generate so much, the size of small towns on these cruise ships with the passengers and the crew, and so their footprint can be very large in comparison to the rest of the shipping industry.

Colin Bisset: Is there a scale or a hierarchy of pollution problems regarding cruise ships?

Marcie Keever: I think the biggest problems are the air pollution and the water pollution. The air pollution is extremely damaging to public health, and so in many cases that has been prioritised. Ports in Australia have said you have to use cleaner fuel when you dock here. Other ports are looking into shore-based power where you plug in to a cleaner land-based source of power and turn your engines off entirely in port. That has been a priority because the air pollution from the dirty bunker fuel is so toxic and so damaging to public health.

The US and Canada made it a priority by implementing the emission control area in North America where you have to use…and this is not just cruise ships, this is all large ships, they cannot use bunker fuel within 200 nautical miles, they have to use cleaner marine distillate fuels that are much, much lower sulphur emissions, and are both avoiding incredible…you know, millions of dollars in healthcare costs, and tens of thousands of early mortalities by 2020 and 2030.

The thing that I think is really important and being looked at by the International Maritime Organisation, which is the UN body that sets regulations for shipping, is actually banning bunker fuel at some point. So they are talking about 2020 or 2025, and the way things go internationally it looks more like 2025. But that would be a huge step in the right direction for the entire shipping industry to really clean up.

Colin Bisset: Can you tell me exactly what bunker fuel is?

Marcie Keever: It's basically a residual fuel, it's the bottom of the barrel from the refining process. It's essentially unrefined crude oil. And it has incredible amounts of sulphur, in particular sulphur emissions when it burns, and so that's what that black sooty smokestack is that you see if you are at a port. In the United States it's about 15 parts per million sulphur for on-road diesel truck fuel, but bunker fuel is between 27,000 and 35,000 parts per million sulphur.

So we are also concerned about things like sewage pollution. It's required to be treated before it's released within three nautical miles or about a little over four regular miles, beyond that there are no rules. A ship in theory could turn off its treatment systems once it is beyond three nautical miles and dump raw sewage in the ocean. It's very difficult not to dump in the ocean at all because there isn't enough land-based sewage treatment to pump out at the dock. Smaller boats have that ability. But what is available and what many cruise lines have adopted across the board, like Royal Caribbean, Disney, two of the best when it comes to sewage treatment, it's called advanced sewage treatment systems, and those go beyond what is required internationally for existing ships and do a much, much better job.

Colin Bisset: We're getting very, very large cruise ships, and the cruise lines are exploring new destinations always. Are we at risk of trashing these destinations?

Marcie Keever: Very much so. Cuba is a big concern. The industry is extremely excited about that new market opening up. It's a big, big concern that there will be pressure to dynamite the reefs to make it deeper so cruise ships can go in right to the dock rather than having to ferry passengers in, and the pollution streams that are definitely possible from these ships because Cuba doesn't have a lot of restrictions on these because they just haven't been subject to all of these ships showing up.

Colin Bisset: Do you think there will be certain areas of the world that will eventually be banned from cruise ships entering?

Marcie Keever: I think it would be really difficult to do something like a ban. I think that much can be done, and there are industry leaders, and that the message from industry that they are all the same and everyone is doing the best job is really not the right message, and that what the industry should be doing within itself is pressuring those not so good actors to really clean up their act.

Antony Funnell: Cruising into the future. That report from freelance producer Colin Bisset. And his guests were Maria De La Fuente, Stephen Payne, Brett Jardine, and Marcie Keever.

Coming back to dry land now, but staying with an environmental theme and let's hear now from Chris Preist, a Reader in Sustainability and Computer Systems at the University of Bristol. Dr Preist has been studying the energy and environmental impact of our digital communication. And he says the Information and Technology sector now accounts for roughly 4% to 5% of global electricity use and 2% of global greenhouse gas emissions, a similar order of magnitude to the aviation industry.

So, my first question to him was whether we can expect those figures to rise as we move further toward the internet of things, and as the developing world continues its rapid digitalisation?

Chris Preist: Well, not necessarily. The IT industry has achieved very dramatic efficiency gains over the years, but nonetheless because usage has gone up, those efficiency gains have been eaten up by our increased use of IT equipment, both in terms of individuals using more services, more products and more services, and also, as you say, the spread of IT, other technology more around the world. So more people are using it and more people are doing more things with it.

So it is becoming more and more part of our lives, which means up until now all the efficiency gains that have been made in terms of improved efficiency of IT equipment have been eaten up by our increased usage. Whether that will continue or not is an interesting question.

I think it's quite interesting to think about how IT has been used, first of all, to transmit text, and then sound, voice, images, and more recently real-time video. And we can see that it has become more and more of a vehicle for entertainment, and as it has become a vehicle for entertainment, more and more use by us has resulted in more and more of these efficiency gains being eaten up.

However, maybe we will reach a limit, maybe we will reach a peak of how much ICT we can use to entertain ourselves. Maybe video streaming will be enough. Then again, maybe we will find more things to do.

Antony Funnell: And the digital world chews up energy because essentially the internet is a collection of giant data servers, isn't it, that are running on basically fossil fuels.

Chris Preist: Certainly some of them run on fossil fuels, some of them don't. I think it is not only the datacentres, I think we need to think about the network equipment as well and also the mobile networks. In many ways the datacentres are easier to 'green' than the networks, particularly the mobile networks, because data centres are large, concentrated sources of electricity use, and so you can really pour resources in to making them more energy efficient and also more easily procure a single source of green energy if you choose to as a datacentre provider.

However, if we look at the mobile networks, certainly at the moment it is the case that there is less effort put in to securing green energy for mobile networks than there is for datacentres by some of the main datacentre suppliers.

Antony Funnell: Do you think that many organisations, many businesses and organisations are aware of the energy costs of the way in which their organisations operate with regard to their IT, and also just the digital connections that they make?

Chris Preist: There's two parts to your question. I think more and more businesses are aware of the energy costs of the IT that they use directly. More and more businesses are aware of the costs of their own datacentres et cetera. And work goes into trying to make one's individual datacentres and IT equipment more energy efficient, partly for cost reasons because if you are paying for the electricity you want to pay less. However, I think there is far less of an awareness of, if you like, the outsourced energy use of cloud services, of the internet et cetera. I don't think many firms think about that.

Antony Funnell: Over the last couple of decades there has been quite an emphasis on the greening of our offices and businesses, the idea that we want to cut back on paper waste within our organisations. But there hasn't been that kind of focus with digital waste, has there, with regards to our communications and the way we operate.

Chris Preist: No, I think that's true, I think we kind of take the internet and the datacentres behind it as almost a free resource with regard to how much we use it, both in businesses and also in our personal lives, our entertainment lives. We think about these things as being something that is always on tap. And to an extent, going back to what I said earlier on about how IT is used by so many people in the world, there is some validity in that. Each one individual, the amount of digital waste we produce if we are not very careful about how we use the internet is quite small, but because there's so many of us that do it, these little small things can add up to a significant amount.

Antony Funnell: You've been involved in a project called SYMPACT with the Guardian newspaper. Tell us about that.

Chris Preist: That was a piece of work that we did, as you say, with the Guardian newspaper, trying to understand what the end-to-end environmental footprint, carbon footprint and energy footprint of their digital services were. We wanted to compare it with their office based services, their travel and also their printing. And it is actually the first example of where an organisation has publicly declared the emissions associated with the end-to-end footprint of its digital services.

To do it, what we did was we looked at both what we call secondary data, which is information about network equipment et cetera, and also primary data, which is information about how Guardian customers actually use the services now, and direct measurements of the Guardian datacentres to give us as accurate a figure as possible. Inevitably it will be an estimate, as any life cycle assessment carbon footprint is, but nonetheless we think it's a pretty good estimate, a pretty fair estimate.

Antony Funnell: So you've done that particular research with the Guardian, how will that inform the broader discussion around our energy use and the digital world?

Chris Preist: Well, I think that the tool that we developed from that work is something that could be more widely applied, and in fact we are already working currently with the BBC on using it to understand the emissions associated with their streaming technologies and to allow us to compare it with broadcasts. And I think my ambition is that it's a sufficiently detailed model, it can allow us to think about how to effectively deliver these services across the internet in different ways so as to reduce their emissions. So if we take video streaming as an example, there are already techniques being used which is where you can cache them more close to where the customer uses them to avoid repeated use of the core of the internet, of the basic datacentres.

So we could imagine assessing various different alternative deployment architectures with a view to finding out which ones are most energy-efficient, based on the actual customer behaviour, based on the fact that some programs will be accessed by very many people, whereas other programs will be accessed by very few, and think about how based on this actual user behaviour we can create systems which provide a good quality service to people with significant reduction in energy consumption by the internet.

Antony Funnell: Dr Chris Preist, a Reader in Sustainability and Computer Systems at the University of Bristol.

And that's all we have time for this week. My co-producer is Karin Zsivanovits. The sound engineer for this particular program, Steve Fieldhouse.

I'm Antony Funnell, you've been listening to Future Tense, until next time, cheers!